Marisel Moreno

Professor of Spanish
Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures

Education

Ph.D., Georgetown University

B.A., University of Pennsylvania

Research and Teaching Interests

US Latina/o/x literature, Hispanic Caribbean literature, AfroLatinxs, US Central Americans, Gender, Race and Ethnicity, Community-Engaged Learning

Biography

Marisel Moreno is the Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame, where she teaches US Latina/e/o/x Literature. She is the author of Family Matters: Puerto Rican Women Authors on the Island and the Mainland (University of Virginia Press, 2012) and Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art (part of the “Latinx: The Future is Now Series” at the University of Texas Press, July 2022), which won the 2023 Caribbean Studies Association’s Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award and received an Isis Duarte Book Prize Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association’s Haiti-Dominican Republic Section. She is the recipient of the Indiana Governor’s Award for Service-Learning (2011), the Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award (2016), and the Rev. William A. Toohey, C.S.C. Award for Social Justice (2019). Moreno’s teaching and research interests focus on AfroLatinx and Latinx Caribbean literarture and cultural production. Her articles have been published in Hispanic Review, Latino Studies, Studies in American Fiction, Afro-Hispanic Review, CENTRO, The Latino(a) Research Review, and MELUS, among others. She has co-created and co-organized, with Thomas F. Anderson, the digital humanities project Listening to Puerto Rico. She also co-curated, with Anderson, the exhibit Art at the Service of the People: Posters and Books from Puerto Rico’s Division of Community Education (DIVEDCO), for the Snite Museum at Notre Dame (2012). The exhibit has traveled to California Lutheran University (2017), the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (8/2018-1/2020), and was on digital display at the Galería de Arte at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico (2020), for which a website was created. She organized the “Centering Blackness, Challenging Latinidades” Latinx Studies Association Conference, hosted by ILS, on campus in July 2022. Prof. Moreno is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies, the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Center for Social Concerns, and the Initiative on Race and Resilience, and is Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies and Africana Studies.

Representative Publications

Books (Monographs):

Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature & Art. Austin: University of Texas Press, Latinx: The Future is Now Series. August 2022: 304 pp

2023 Caribbean Studies Association’s Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award
2023 Isis Duarte Book Prize Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association’s Haiti-Dominican Republic Section

Family Matters: Puerto Rican Women Authors on the Island and the Mainland. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, August 2012: 248 pp

Book Chapter:

“Keeping It Real: Bridging US Latino/a Literature and Community Through Student Engagement” in Civic Engagement in Diverse Latina/o Communities: Learning from Social Justice Partnerships in Action, Edited by Mari Castañeda and Joseph Krupczynski. (Peter Lang, Spring 2018).

Articles in Refereed Journals:

“Listening to Puerto Rico and the Importance of Engaged Digital Scholarship in Academia.” Co-authored with Thomas F. Anderson. CENTRO Journal (Center for Puerto Rican Studies) 33.1 (Spring 2021): 194-227.

“Literary Representations of Migration.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Latina/o Literature. Spring 2019. 27 pp.

“The ‘Art of Witness’ in US Central American Cultural Production: An Analysis of William Archila’s The Art of Exile and Alma Leiva’s Celdas.” Latino Studies 15.3 (Fall 2017): 287-308.

“The Untold Midwestern Puerto Rican Story: Fred Arroyo’s Western Avenue and Other Fictions.” Studies in American Fiction 42.2 (Fall 2015): 269-289.

“‘Swimming in olive oil’: North Africa and the Hispanic Caribbean in the Poetry of Víctor Hernández Cruz.” Hispanic Review 83.3 (Summer 2015). 299-316.